Ep 282: Preorder My New Book “Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation”!

My first book, Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation, will be released on Christians for Liberty Press on Tuesday, September 15, 2026! The thesis of my book is simple: the New Testament does not endorse modern authoritarian socialism. A massive amount of research went into this book, and I am very excited to share it with you! 

Preorder a physical copy here: https://libertarianchristians.com/store/politics-economics-and-new-testament-interpretation/ 

You can also preorder the Kindle version here: https://a.co/d/0do2v9ZW

The book will be available in both physical and electronic formats on most major platforms starting September 15! Get yourself a copy!

Sign up for LCI’s 2026 Conference in Cincinnati, OH on Saturday, October 17! Many LCI content creators, including myself, will be speaking at the event, and it will be an excellent opportunity to connect with likeminded, liberty-loving Christians. Check out the event and sign up here: https://libertarianchristians.com/conference/ 

The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com. 

Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at theprotestantlibertarian@gmail.com.  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod, and YouTube, @ProLibertyPod, where you will get shorts and other exclusive video content. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a star rating and leaving me a review, it really helps expand the show’s profile! Thanks!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I really hope that you guys enjoy today's show. All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. This is a Thursday episode, uh, but it's not a theology Thursday episode, and it will not take very long. But I have a huge announcement to make that is going to impact the future of this show and the future of the work that I do for the Libertarian Christian Institute. And as you all know, for uh the last year or so, uh, I've been working on finishing up a book and getting it published through the Libertarian Christian Institute. And that book is going to be released on September 15th, 2026, through the Christians for Liberty Press. I've been talking about it for the last couple of months. I started writing this thing in January of 2015, and it is finally coming to fruition. The book, which you can see behind me and which I'm also going to hold up if you're watching on YouTube, is called Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation. It is a very good-looking book. I got to give full credit to Doug Stewart for coming up with the cover art for that book. And in it, I argue that the New Testament does not endorse or legitimate modern authoritarian socialism. So this project was born out of a frustration that I've had with the field of biblical scholarship and then in wider Christian discourse as well for a long time. And that is namely our inability as Christians to precisely define political and economic categories and definitions. We use terms like capitalism and socialism without anchoring them to any sort of consistent or stable meaning. And that creates interpretive disruptions in the way that we approach the text and then more importantly and hermeneutically in the way that we apply the text in the modern world. While this is certainly true of lay readers of scripture, this is also true of professional biblical scholars. And so, as I was, many of you know, as I was working on my degree in biblical studies a long time ago, now at this point, it was the heyday of anti-imperial readings of the Bible. And what I realized is that the anti-imperial scholars always seemed to want to give more money and more power to the government. Now, I didn't have a political philosophy at that time, but or a well-defined political philosophy at that time, but that seemed like a huge inconsistency. And it just seemed like a lot of scholars were playing fast and loose with these political and economic terms and drawing sloppy modern um applications as a result of that. And over the last 10 years or so, as I've been really diving into political theory and economic theory and trying to understand how all of this works, along with reading more and more scholarship on the Bible and how the Bible works in this historical context, I realized that there's a huge problem in the field that needed to be addressed. So this book, Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation, it is my life's work. I've been going at this for, I mean, I've been reading the Bible since 2004, like on a daily basis. And I started studying it professionally in 2007, right? So this is nearly 20 years of really intensive study and even more than that, going back into my high school days when I was just reading the Bible. This is years and years, decades of work and thought and reflection all built into this book. Now, it is really, really, really important to me that I'm able to get these ideas out there because for years I was kind of hoping that somebody would come along and write a book like this, and no one did. So I got sick and tired of waiting. I'd done a lot of work on the New Testament. And so I just went ahead and went for it. And the book is long, like I said, it's about 700 pages long, which is huge. Um, but I divide the book up into three sections. In the first section of the book, I simply review how these political and economic categories should work. So we talk about um capitalism and socialism, how to define those two terms, about how progressivism, progressivism, and conservatism share a lot of the same fundamental assumptions and how the real political spectrum is liberty versus authority, not progressive versus conservatism. And I try to provide clear, consistent, and irreducible definitions of modern political and economic categories that are based on the Austrian school of economics. And at the end of the day, we have to define these terms as they relate to the concept of violence and nonviolence, that capitalism, as the Austrian school defines it, is an economic system that's based on the free exchange of goods and services between peaceful people. So any sort of violent intrusion into that system is therefore inherently not capitalism. And then when we talk about liberty versus authority, a libertarian political order is one in which arbitrary authority is not exercised against innocent or peaceful people. And so we go over these terms, we define these terms, we talk about how we need a better political vocabulary, and I actually articulate what I mean by those terms as I go through the book. And then in the second section of the book, I situate the New Testament in its historical context. So I talk about how to read the Bible, like what is the Bible? What is this collection of 66 works? If you're a Protestant, 66 and 73, if you're a Catholic, but what is this collection of works? How was this intended to be read by the church? How does this impact us today? What is the Bible doing? And then I have a chapter where we talk about the Greco-Roman background of the first century world, the New Testament, and then we talk about the Jewish background of the New Testament, both kind of essentially situating the Bible in its historical context. And then the majority of the book, nearly 500 pages of the book, is just interpretation of the New Testament. I have a very large section on the Gospels. I have a chapter where I explain how the Gospels need to be read in their historical context, trying to understand the Gospels as a biography. What information do they give us about Jesus as a historical figure? How do they mediate our knowledge of Jesus and what impact were they designed to have on their audience? And then I go through every passage in the Gospels that deals with a political or economic theme and fit that into my framework. So using the consistent and uh irreducible definitions that I develop in part one of my book, I explore how the Gospels work that out and their narrative presentation of Jesus as Messiah and what that says about who he is. And then I have a very long section of the book about Paul where we talk about how to read Paul's letters, and then I go through all the letters of Paul. This culminates in a very long chapter on Romans, and of course, uh a large exploration of Romans 13 and what Paul is actually trying to do in that passage that busts through a lot of the mythology of Romans 13. And then I have a long section on the Catholic epistles, a chapter on the book of Revelation, and then at the end I circle back looking at all of my research, and I give examples of where New Testament scholars have conducted excellent historical research and drawn incredible theological conclusions about the nature of Jesus as the Messiah, about the exclusive identity of the church, about the uh inaugurated eschatology, the idea that the end has already begun in the present. And I show how, because of their inability to define modern economic and political categories, they have taken their interpretive conclusions, which are correct and true, and their theological conclusions, which are true, and then misapplied them in the modern world. And so we take a look at a couple of examples of that and talk about how we can avoid those problems in the future. So this book is massive. I'm really excited about uh getting it out there to you guys. And I am, I'm so ready for you all to read it. Now, the reason why I've waited this long to release, like a, you know, kind of a longer explanation of the book is that we have been waiting for our pre-order links for this book. And right now, this book is available for pre-order. So I'm going to show you exactly where you can get that. Again, I want to give a shout-out to Doug Stewart. There was a lot that happened on the back end here, just trying to get all of the marketing and everything together for it. There's a lot that goes into publishing a book. We know we have our Christians for Liberty Press. You have to get it typeseted, you have to get it printed. There's a lot that goes into this uh that I wasn't really aware of when I was writing the book. And so he's put in a lot of work, Doug has to make sure that this happened. And we finally have our pre-order. So I'm going to show you guys where you can find those. So for the physical copy of the book, all right, you can get on libertarian Christians.com and go to our store. Uh, and actually, there's a tab at the top of the page on libertarianchristians.com. You can click on that says books, and then you will see that my book is right up there. You can click on that and you can pre-order the paperback copy of the book. That is $34.99. And if you pre-order the book, you will get free shipping on that. Again, this book looks great. And this is this is actually a proof. So it's gonna look like the uh the final book is gonna look even better than the one that I'm holding in my hand. But it's a beautiful book, really well laid out. And again, if you are like me, uh those of you guys that are longtime listeners to the show know that I do not at all like ebooks. Like I just can't, for whatever reason, when I'm looking at words on a screen, my brain does not process those words very well. But when I have a book, it's so much easier to do that. And I like you can mark this up, take notes, and all that kind of stuff. So very, very uh excited for you. I would highly recommend you getting this book. It looks phenomenal. Uh, you can take it with you, share it with people, put it on your coffee table, start conversations with your friends and family members about it. So if you want to pre-order a copy of the book, a hard copy of the book, that's libertarianchristians.com slash um, well, I guess slash shore, or you can click on the books tab and you can find my book there. So if you want a hard copy of that. Now, if you want a if you want a um, if you want to pre-order, go ahead and pre-order the Kindle version, you can go over to, and let me go ahead and share my screen. It's the first time I've ever used screen sharing in a podcast. So we're figuring this all out here. New technology, new era of the show. It's great. You can go over to Amazon.com, type in my name, or type in the title of the book, Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation, and you can pre-order the Kindle version, which is substantially cheaper at uh $12.99. A part of the logic for this is that, you know, I know that there are a lot of people out there that don't like physical copies of the books and that only read digitally. And we want to make sure that these ideas can get out there as as widely as possible. So $12.99 for the book over on Amazon to pre-order that. And here's the cool thing: um, one of the categories that this is going to be filed under is New Testament, Bible, um, and I think like uh, you know, maybe biblical studies or whatever. There are a couple categories on Amazon. And I would love to get this book to the top of one of those categories to be the bestseller in one of those categories. With something like Biblical Scholarship, I really think I only need to sell like five copies to make that happen. It's not much. So if you would, uh if you're interested in this book and you don't want the physical copy, you can go over and for a much discounted price, get the Kindle version, uh, pre-order the Kindle version on Amazon. Of course, when this book comes out on September 15th, you will also be able to buy a physical copy through Amazon.com. So that will be updated on that day. But this is very, very exciting. I cannot wait for you guys to get this book. Um, it is just a month and a half away. Uh, again, I want to get as many copies of these this book out there, not because I'm trying to become a millionaire. I certainly will not with this book, but because I really believe in these ideas. And I strongly believe that a book has never been written quite like this one before. This is different. We're taking on uh a methodological issue. We're trying to situate the Bible in its historical context. And of course, the main thesis of the book is that the Bible does not endorse modern authoritarian socialism. This isn't really a work of political philosophy. I know that many of you that listen to the show love political philosophy. I do too, but this is very much a deconstructive effort. We're taking these common ideas and assumptions that lay readers of the Bible and biblical scholars have about political and economic concepts, and we're completely demolishing them, showing how the Bible doesn't actually endorse the prevailing political and economic views of our time. So again, the book is politics, economics, and next interpretation. That is going to be out September 15th, 2026. I cannot wait for you guys to get a hold of this. Please, please, please go and pre-order yourself a copy today. Links will be in the show notes. Um, after this episode, too, hang on, hang on for uh just a minute. I'm gonna have an advertisement for the Christians for Liberty conference that we are having in Ohio, which is going to be on Saturday, October 17th. Uh, Cody Cook has done an ad read for that. This is right in Cody's neighborhood and uh not too far from where I live in Kentucky as well. So if you're in the area, we would love to have you at the Libertarian Christian Conference. I am going to be one of the speakers there. I'm gonna be talking about an issue that uh arose out of my research for this book that I'm very excited about. I would love to meet all of you guys. We got Cody Cook, we got Jacob Wintigrad, we got Greg Bauss, we got all kinds of great people from the Libertarian Christian Institute. And then we're working on some other ones, but I know we got Jeremy Todd. He's the one who is running in my district for Massey's seat after the Republican Party uh ousted Massey for being a free thinker and an actual conservative. Uh, Jeremy Todd is gonna come in and run against him, and he's gonna come and talk to us about that. So we're really excited about having Jeremy there. So there's just a lot of great opportunities. So pre-order a copy of my book, whether it's hardback or Kindle, sign up for the Christians for Liberty conference. It's gonna be in October with all the great Libertarian Christian Institute speakers. And uh stay tuned for Cody's ad read after this. Again, thank you guys for everything you've done. I'm really excited about getting this book out to you, and I cannot wait for you to read it. I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Our first conference in almost 10 years will be held in the Cincinnati area on October 17th, 2026, and we want you to be there. The Christians for Liberty 2026 conference will be held at the Village Vineyard Church in South Lebanon, Ohio, which is in the Greater Cincinnati area. This conference will feature guest speakers, interviews, and a panel with authors from our upcoming book, Four Views Reconciling Faith and Freedom. While all of these sessions will be recorded, and that means you'll be participating in live Christians for Liberty Network podcasts. There's stuff at this conference that you simply won't get on a podcast. You'll get to meet some of your favorite thinkers in the Liberty Movement and build relationships with other advocates for faith and freedom. And the earlier you order, the better the deal you'll get on your pass. Get yours now at libertarian Christians.com/slash conference. See you there.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at the Protestant Libertarian at gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter. You can follow me at the handle at Pro Liberty Pod. Again, that is at Pro Liberty Pod. And you can also visit me at the Protestant Libertarian Podcast.com. At the Protestant Libertarian Podcast.com, you can also support the Christians for Liberty Network and the Libertarian Christian Institute. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and we will see you next Tuesday.